Round-Up: Tim Daisy

Daisy recorded this improvised session with Norwegian pianist Havard Wiik and Australian bassist Clayton Thomas during a particularly adventurous afternoon session in Berlin. It's definitely not a standard piano trio. It's more of an experimental vehicle maneuvered by the collective spirit of the players and the moment, like the kind of European/Chicagoan ensembles you're likely to see at Chicago's Umbrella festival – meaning it's a pajama party where some of the most creative minds on the planet get to interact with each other in a carefully planned format that ideally fosters a surplus of surprise and whimsy. And like the line-ups Umbrella presents, this one often meets the mark and sometimes exceeds its pretty high expectations.

The disc opens with “Suite for Three” which begins with inspired chaos, setting the tone for the entire recording. It moves in many directions, including a walk along a fine line between free jazz and modern classical structures, comprising a clash of mini sonic movements that places the listener into the heart of a micro-tonal beehive. “Spreepark Serenade” continues the hum-with-small-bits-of-chaos sound featuring Wiik's piano work, which is reminiscent of Fred Van Hove's attack on those classic Brotzmann records. “There Goes the Sun” rides many thunderstorms throughout its nearly 30 minute exercise, along the way inviting comparisons to Van Hove/Bennink (again) and featuring a segment that features Thomas playing a glass while Wiik plays monolithic clusters and Daisy frantically searches for a way out of the mayhem. The disc closes with “Treptow Promenade,” which begins as a minimalistic exploration of the spaces between the notes/sounds, but gradually builds to a long crescendo of Cecil Taylor style proportions until collapsing into a sub-sonic rumble that lasts for two minutes.

Here's hoping this is just the beginning for this band. Rempis, bring 'em to Umbrella 2014!CD limited to 350 copies. Also available as a digital download here.

Similar to the session for the trio date, Swiss pianist Hans Peter Pfammatter recorded this duo w/ Daisy in a single afternoon in 2009 in Chicago. Pfammatter plays “prepared” piano, but not exclusively. Combining the percussive attack of the prepared strings with the melodic and chordal structures of the unprepared strings creates a one-man-band feel at times, notably on pair of tracks, “For Tinguely” and “Ravenswood”. This playfulness and invention reminds me of Monk, in the way that it's done with humor and careful attention to space. Also like Monk, Pfammatter uses elliptical blocks of melody as an anchor and likes to “slur” the notes.

Daisy is a magnificent foil for Pfammatter, pushing and pulling and prodding Hans who, again like Monk, can be as stubborn as a mule. Daisy is sensitive and surprising enough to make the most of every musical situation here – even when Pfammatter puts his foot down and holds steady. “On Sheridan” and “Different Names” are particularly fascinating psychological studies of both of these musicians' personalities.

Things slow down a bit on “Winona,” a contemplative track that drowns the melody in its own resonance by way of Pfammatter's refusal to lift the damper pedal for even a millisecond. His timekeeping on the prepared keys, playing dual/duel percussion with Daisy, whose playing lifts the track above mere prettiness and closer to a place of beauty. The album closes with a spacious exploration of sound (“Glass and Steel”) on which both men work in hot pursuit of every tonal color their instruments are capable of producing. Download here.

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What I appreciate in music & how to evaluate it for others

Here are some criteria which I find very important, and true, there may be overlap between them all, but they still have their specific shades and colors of value, and there may be other criteria to add.

1. AUTHENTIC : the emotions have to be real, genuine and truthful, the prime objective should be to create good music for the sake of the music itself (not in order to sell, or to show off, or any other thing ...). That's why I like improvized music, because the link between emotion, musician, sound and listener is to be found in its purest form. It's your immediate emotion you're transmitting, not someone else's. Paradoxically enough, this also includes "absence of self", as a prerequisite for true interplay, listening skills and communion between band members.

2. ADVENTUROUS : the artist/band should be looking for new ways to express what they feel and have to communicate. What's the point for the listener to hear the same kind of approach as others have tried. The surprise element, the creativity, the musical vision are part of the adventure. As a listener I want to be taken along, and explore new musical horizons.

3. ACCURATE : when you hear the sounds, you must have a reaction of "Yes, that's it!", as the sublime translation of feelings through skills and mastery of the instrument, the total sound created by a band or the newly created musical language. The sound, or just obtaining that single note which encapsulates it all, yes, then you know you've transmitted something as a musician, that you've received something as a listener, that you share something. Doing that requires accuracy and concentration.

4. ARTISTIC : by that I mean the more cerebral aspect of music. There is some concept behind it, which leads to structure, balance, length, interplay, selection of instruments, of musicians, of new approaches. This does not go against improvisation, quite on the contrary : great improvised music is all about artistic vision, clever group interaction.

5. ATTENTION-GRABBING : though music can and should require an effort from the listener, it should also include a factor of entertainment, in the sense of keeping the attention going, of being captivating. Lots of music, and especially during long soloing, contains the risk of losing the listener somewhere along the way, even if the musicians themselves are very intensively busy with interesting things. There is of course lots of music which does not take the listener into account at all...

That's my "quintuple A" internal rating system. The stars I usually give in my scoring system are not only not very accurate, they're also not sufficiently discerning. Maybe I should give stars for each of the five criteria listed above. I think the five criteria also include what in Arabic is called "tarab" : appealing to mind, body and soul alike, as far as I understood this from the liner notes from Rabih Abou-Khalil's album with the same name. I specifically did not include the qualifier "beautiful" in the list, because that's even more subjective than the ones already there, and furthermore, I did not find a good synonym for it which starts with an "a" ...